Our world is going through difficult times right now. Rampant censorship, deportations without criminal charges and a global rise of right-wing movements have all taken centre stage. As per the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the US saw a 182 per cent spike in cases of bias incidents against Muslims, ranging from verbal harassment to physical abuse, between October 7 and October 24 2023. Additionally, the number of immigrants without criminal charges arrested by Ice from mid-January to late February has risen by 334 per cent.
This insidious rise of racism and bigotry has affected all minority communities, including Muslim women. It’s why this year, Muslim Girl founder Amani Al-Khatahtbeh announced that the Muslim Women’s Day celebration in 2025 is cancelled for the first time since Muslim Girl launched the annual global campaign in 2017. “Let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as being a voice for the voiceless,” she wrote in an open letter commemorating the occasion. “Everybody has a voice, and there are those that are systematically silenced.” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib echoed her concerns in Muslim Girl’s awareness campaign video, calling on the public to “stand with us in the fight for our rights.”
In her letter, Amani calls upon the public to rise up to today’s censorship by sharing and platforming the voices under attack, with a totally renewed intention. We must platform each other’s voices and promote visibility across all different backgrounds. In light of this, we have compiled a list of books written by some incredible Muslim women authors whose work amplifies our voices and defies our erasure.
HOME FIRE, KAMILA SHAMSIE
This 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction-winning novel reimagines the ancient Greek play Antigone with a contemporary British Muslim twist. Centering the story around the Pasha family, comprising two twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz, their older sister Asma, their now dead Jihadi father, the novel deals with the identity and security of Muslims in modern Britain.
In this novel published by Syrian-American author Mohja Kahf, we follow the journey of Khadra, a daughter of Syrian-Muslim parents as she navigates her religious identity after growing up in a conservative family. This semi-autobiographical book explores the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, offering a nuanced perspective into the intellectual and spiritual agency of Muslim women.
Told through a series of emails, this story explores the lives of four women growing up in Saudi: Lamees, Michelle, Gamrah and Sadeem. It charts the clashes between culture, sexuality and adult life within the privileged society of Riyadh. Centered at the core of this novel is Arab and Muslim identity and the many conflicts it brings along. Written in a searing confessional style, the novel maps the conflicting emotions that come along with growing up Muslim in high society.
This raw account of Farah’s adolescence in Srinagar, Kashmir, during the the peak of the militant insurgency in the 1990s. Against the backdrop of the Indian army’s brutal assault across the city, Farah recounts a girlhood spent under turmoil. In this brave account, she manages to perfectly encapsulate the coming of age genre and gauge what it actually means to grow up in the midst of conflict.
A New York Times bestseller which became the first novel to be published under Sarah Jessica Parker’s Hogarth imprint, the book is a moving account of the South Asian immigrant experience. The book follows the lives of an Indian American family, spanning across decades of the family’s life and examining what it means to belong as Muslim in America.
This novel explores a Palestinian-American woman’s fraught struggles with faith, loss and identity. The protagonist, Afaf Rahman, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs which is attacked by a radical alt-right shooter. She struggles to grapple with her cultural roots in the aftermath of the attack: on the one hand, it’s a catalyst for the bigotry and hate she has experienced, while on the other hand, it provides her with a sense of connection and community.
Nayri is an immigrant who escaped the Iranian revolution at the age of eight. Having lived in refugee camps before being granted asylum in America before eventually studying at Princeton University, Nayri’s vivid account of her experiences integrates her own immigration narrative with stories of other refugees, ranging from a closeted queer man seeking asylum to a couple falling in love over the phone. In this book, Nayri also powerfully takes aim at the toxic idea of the ‘good’ immigrant.
This novel maps four generations of a fictitious Palestinian middle-class family spanning from 1963 to 2014, narrating events from the 60 days war of 1967 up until the 2006 Lebanon War. The chapters all follow a different member of the Yacoub family and humanise this prolonged, bloody conflict.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the founder of Muslim Girl, the largest platform for voices of Muslim women, was just nine years old when 9/11 happened. In this candid memoir, she recounts her struggles of coming of age in post-9/11 America and her journey of gaining self-confidence as she forged a unique sisterhood through the founding of Muslim Girl.
